Our Children Are Not Our Children: But They Should Be
My friend called me up to tell me she had to leave her office for a while because she had become overwhelmed by the first two clients she had seen. She called me because of the long standing friendship we have and because she knew I had worked for many years with youth that were homeless, gang involved, abused and neglected. She thought that I could offer some insight and support. She works with pregnant and parenting teens in Tennessee. She explained that her first client was a fifteen year old that was pregnant with her fourth child; she didn’t have to say any more about that one. It was her second client that had caused her so much consternation that she had to leave her office for the rest of the day. The young lady was seventeen years old and seven...
A Harm to Themselves and Others: Black, Mentally Ill and Imprisoned
It is no secret that the United States disproportionately arrests, convicts, and imprisons African Americans and other people of color. It is also apparent that there is significant antipathy and fear of African American males in particular, by the police and other law enforcement officers, as stated so clearly by ex police Chief Norm Stamper in his book Breaking Rank: Simply put, white cops are afraid of black men. We don’t talk about it, we pretend it doesn’t exist, we claim “color blindness,” we say white officers treat black men the same way they treat white men. But that’s a lie. In fact, the bigger, the darker the black man the greater the fear. The African American community knows this. Hell, most whites know it. Yet, even though...
